Read Chapter 25: The Ice Cracks

The roar of the blast still rang in Harlow’s ears as he stumbled across the tilting deck, the acrid bite of gunpowder burning his throat. Ice chunks, some the size of a carriage, rained down around the ship, cracking against the planking and sending tremors through his boots. Through the haze, he saw the ridge—the mountain of pressure ice that had sealed the strait—split clean down its center. Water rushed to fill the gap, black and hungry, and the *Discovery* answered with a groan that spoke less of triumph and more of injury.

“Mr. Graves! Damage report!” Harlow shouted, spitting the taste of powder from his mouth.

Graves, the boatswain, appeared at the rail, his face smeared with soot and frost. His eyes were wide. “She’s holed, sir. Below the waterline—carpenter says a plank’s sprung and a seam’s opened like a fish gut. We’re taking on water fast.”

The words hit Harlow like a physical blow. He had gambled on the blast; he had known the risk. But knowing and hearing were different animals. The deck shifted beneath him, no longer the steady platform of a moment before. The *Discovery* was dying beneath their feet, and the open lead they had fought so hard to reach was already trying to swallow them whole.

“All hands to the pumps! Every man not on the pumps, below decks with the carpenter. I want canvas and tar—everything we have.” Harlow’s voice cut through the rising panic, a blade of authority. He grabbed Graves by the arm. “And get someone to keep her head into the current. If she swings broadside, the ice will crush us like an egg.”

Graves nodded and ran, shouting orders. Men tumbled from below, their faces pale, their breath fogging in the cold. Harlow pushed his way toward the hatch, descending into the gloom of the hold. The air turned wet and heavy, filled with the back-beat thud of water slapping against timber—water that was already swirling around his shins.

Carpenter Jeffers was there, knee-deep in the black water, his lantern held high against the hull. The light played over the wound: a jagged crack running three feet long, the split plank splintered and weeping, each surge of the sea forcing a fresh gush of freezing water into the hold.

“It’s worse than I said, Captain,” Jeffers said, using the title Harlow had never fully earned. “The blast did it. The shockwave traveled the hull and popped this seam. We need to relieve the pressure, or she’ll split further.”

“Then we relieve it,” Harlow said. He turned to the men gathered behind him, their faces a blur in the lantern light. “You heard the carpenter. Canvas and tar. Bring the spare sails if you have to. We’re going to patch her and we’re going to keep her floating.”

A crewman stepped forward—Morris, the one Pence’s ledger had marked as clear of debt. He held a roll of heavy canvas, and to Harlow’s surprise, there was no accusation in his eyes, only a grim determination. “Orders, sir?”

Harlow took the canvas. “We can’t patch her from inside alone. The water’s pressure is too strong. We need to seal her from the outside.”

The hold went silent. Sealing from outside meant going into the water. And the water was a churning slurry of ice and death.

“I’ll go,” Morris said quietly.

“No.” Harlow shook his head. “I need you on the pumps. I’ll take—” He stopped. Who could he trust with his life in that water? Trust was a currency in short supply on this ship. He looked over the faces: Jeffers, brave but old; Pence, confined below and not an option; Cummings’s loyalists, watching with cold, calculating eyes.

“I’ll go,” Harlow said.

“Captain, you can’t—” Jeffers started.

“I can,” Harlow cut him off. “And I will. You’ll rig a line from the stern. I’ll work the canvas over the breach while you tighten the bolts from inside. It’s the only way.”

The men exchanged glances. Some held doubt, some held respect newly born. Morris just nodded. “We’ll keep her breathing, sir. You see to it that she lives.”

Harlow stripped off his heavy coat, his breath pluming in the cold. The air itself seemed to have teeth. He grabbed a pot of tar—sticky and vile—and daubed it onto the canvas, his fingers stiffening even as he worked. Every second counted. He could feel the ship settling beneath him, the sluggish roll of a wounded giant.

Above, the pumps began their rhythm, a desperate heartbeat. Men grunted as they worked the levers, sending arcs of icy water over the side. It wouldn’t be enough. Not at this rate.

“Line’s rigged, Captain,” Graves called from above.

Harlow tied the rope tight around his waist and climbed onto the ship’s ice-crusted rail. The water below was black, seething with small ice floes that clinked against the hull like a dirge. The wind bit through his woolen shirt, cutting to the bone. He looked up at the sky—a pale wash of gray, indifferent to his suffering.

Then he jumped.

The cold hit him like a wall. It stole his breath, clamped around his chest like iron bands. His limbs went numb within seconds, the world reduced to sensation of ice and pain. The canvas, heavy with tar, dragged him down, and for a moment he was blind, lost in the black water.

He kicked, surfaced, gasped. The *Discovery* loomed above him, massive and dark, her hull streaked with frost. He saw the crack—a pale scar in the dark wood—and struck out for it. The current pulled at him, trying to drag him beneath the ship, but the rope held, taut against his waist.

He pressed the canvas against the breach. The water fought him, forcing the tarred cloth away. He braced his feet against the keel and leaned in, using his whole body as a clamp. Above, he heard Jeffers shouting orders, the ring of hammers against iron, the bolts being tightened from inside.

“Hold it steady, Captain!” Jeffers’s voice filtered through the wood, muffled but clear.

Harlow held. His hands were beyond numb now—he could no longer feel them. He worked on muscle memory, on a stubborn refusal to die in this black, heartless sea. The tar bit into his palms, blistered his skin, but he did not let go.

The water surged again, and with it, a shadow moved beneath him. A seal? A shark? Harlow did not have the breath to care. He pressed harder.

Minutes passed. An eternity. Then, faintly, the hammering stopped. Jeffers’s voice came again, triumphant: “She’s sealed! The canvas held!”

Harlow gasped, yanked the line twice, felt the answering tug from above. Hands hauled him up the side of the ship, over the rail, and down onto the deck. He collapsed into a heap, shivering violently, his fingers white and waxy with frostbite. Men gathered around him, pulling off his soaked shirt, wrapping him in blankets.

“You’re a fool, Harlow,” a gruff voice said. Cummings stood at the edge of the circle, his arms crossed, his face unreadable. “A fool who risks his life to save a ship that ain’t yours.”

Harlow looked up at him, his teeth chattering, his voice a ragged whisper. “It’s not mine. But it’s theirs. And I promised to get them home.”

A silence settled over the deck. The pumps still worked, less frantically now, the water level slowly dropping. The *Discovery* groaned but held steady. Morris appeared at Harlow’s side with a cup of warmed tea, pressing it into his unfeeling hands.

“Us loyal to Cummings, sir?” Morris said, loud enough for those nearby to hear. “I watched you jump into that water. I don’t know who the men are who call themselves loyal to him, but I know this: I’m loyal to you.”

A murmur rippled through the crew. Covington, a quiet able seaman, stepped forward. “Aye. To Captain Harlow.”

“To Captain Harlow!” another voice echoed, then another. The chant grew, washing over the deck like a wave.

Cummings’s face tightened, then smoothed into a mask of indifference. He turned and walked away without a word.

Harlow clutched the warm mug, the feeling returning to his fingers in painful pulses. The ship had held. The crew had rallied. But the compass was still burning a hole in his pocket, and the smoke that had led them here still called from the east. And now she was wounded below the waterline, propped up by tar and canvas and the bare strength of a man’s back.

He drained the tea and looked at Morris. “Get the pumps on rotation. Half the crew at a time. I want a night watch on the bilge.”

“And what about you, Captain?”

Harlow stared out at the ice field beyond the lead, the pale sun already sinking toward the horizon. “I’m going to see what’s waiting on the other side of this passage. Because if we can’t find open water soon, all this canvas and tar won’t be worth a damn.”